Page 142 of Sticks and Stones
Gene was making notes, listening to Corbin. They were going to retrace his steps, so tomorrow, they were going knocking on doors to talk to college kids.
It was a weekend, but they’d find them one way or another.
“How long ago?” Greyson asked.
He didn’t hesitate.
“October.”
Jesus.
That was months ago.
“If you flip pages, you’ll see the autopsy report and the pictures. When the three of them were found before Christmas, they were nothing but bones and some flesh that predators left behind on the one victim. The ME said they’d been out in the weather for at least a month.”
That was a sad thing, and they all knew it.
They’d been someone’s loved ones.
“So the first victim went missing in October, and by December, he was dead?”
He nodded.
Ethan noticed that Corbin was struggling with his cheesesteak, so he got up, grabbed a plate, and some silverware.
The only good thing for Corbin was his right arm wasn’t the broken one.
When he sat, he cut up his cheesesteak into little pieces and handed the man a fork to make it easier on his jaw and broken teeth.
“Thank you,” Corbin said, feeding himself.
“It’s not a problem,” he admitted.
Slowly, Corbin chewed, and they could tell that he was struggling with it even being small pieces.
Gene made a mental note to bring home something softer when he went out next.
Like soup.
“The next victim was Wesley Thorton,” Corbin admitted. “He was also a college student. He went to Temple,” he stated. “He was also the only victim of color out of the three.”
It told them that the person who was trafficking people didn’t have a single ethnicity preference. That made it more difficult for Ethan to profile any more victims.
“He left for classes one day, and that night he never came back to his dorm room. His roommate said he was supposed to be there for dinner since they always went to dinner together, but he was a no-show.”
Greyson wiped his mouth and shared what he was thinking.
“That tells us that the person taking them had contact with them during the day, and that he doesn’t hunt at a specific time.”
Corbin spoke up.
“That’s what I thought, but when I dug deeper into it, I found out that Wesley had texted his roommate at some point, saying he was meeting other friends for dinner. He didn’t get the text until much later.”
Ethan was curious.
“Why did he get it later?” he asked.
Corbin filled them in.
